From theatre to performance studies: collaborating on curriculum change with secondary level dramatic arts teachers

ABSTRACT

This essay presents a small-scale interview study interested in finding out how experienced secondary level drama teachers responded to their reading of a newly developed curriculum in performance studies. The curriculum was developed with funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the University of Victoria (2013–2017). We carried out interviews with seven experienced drama teachers in and around Victoria, British Columbia. Each teacher was asked to read one unit/chapter of the workbook. We conclude with some tentative and early claims about the introduction of performance studies as a new course of study for secondary students.

KEYWORDS:

• Performance studies
• performance literacy
• curriculum studies
• interview study

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dr. Monica Prendergast, Associate Professor of Drama/Theatre Education, Department of Curriculum & Instruction, University of Victoria. Research interests: drama-based curriculum and pedagogy, applied drama/theatre, and arts-based research. Monica’s books include Applied Theatre, Applied Drama, Teaching Spectatorship, Staging the Not-yet, Drama, Theatre and Performance Education in Canada and Web of Performance.

Robyn Shenfield is a Drama teacher who has taught in Australian and Canadian schools and at the undergraduate level to pre-service teachers. She holds undergraduate degrees and a MEd from Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, and is currently working towards her PhD at the University of Victoria.

Notes

1. https://dspace.library.uvic.ca/handle/1828/9426.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant number 430-2013-000832].